Wednesday, November 25, 2009

A brush with the nasties

I had a frightful scare last morning. During the course of one of her day time naps, Nikki rolled right off her bed! It was the first time something like that had happened and I was petrified that she may have hurt herself. Thankfully, apart from being very rattled because of the fall, she was absolutely unhurt; not even a minor scratch or bruise. I fed her and rocked her to calm her down, and within 20 minutes she was right as rain. It took me a lot longer to calm myself down though. After a few frantic calls to P and Nikki's ped, who managed to convince me that a visit to the hospital emergency section was really not required, I spent the better part of an hour examining Nikki in minute detail to be really really sure she was a-OK. She was of course by then, and demonstrated likewise by being her usual super active self and bouncing off of all available surfaces. So then I got down to the next important task of worrying myself to death about how I could have ever let such a thing happen. I usually put Nikki down at night in her cot, but the bed still remains her preferred choice of location for daytime naps. Since we have a really really large double bed in the master bedroom, thanks to a Delhi based carpenter who believed deeply in the concept of materialistic largesse, I had been putting Nikki down to nap bang in the center of this for her naps, surrounded by a veritable fortress of cushions and bolsters. No longer good enough, clearly, coz she had scaled all of these to make a clean landing on the floor. She also managed to do this within the span of 2.5 minutes, since between me and the help we make sure we check on her every 5 minutes when she's alone on the bed. Anyways, I decided that the cot it is now for every nap, short or long, and spent the rest of the day being a super clingy, chipku kind of parent. I think Nikki was quite relieved to be rid of me when P got back from work. I've also decided its high time I stopped procrastinating on the baby proofing of home project that is way overdue now. So the weekend will see me headed, guns blazing, to the land of corner cushions and child proof locks and such, so that we have a safe haven for Nikki to crawl around in, in the next couple of days.

In other news, I had a mastitis scare over the weekend. Thankfully it was just a clogged milk duct and went away on its own in a few days time, after loads of nursing and warm showers. The timing sucked though, I had a wedding to attend on Sunday and being in terrible pain I went around greeting all and sundry with a horrible glassy smile plastered on my face. I think I single handedly managed to save the bridal party a fair bit of moolah; the sight of me must've ruined the appetite of a lot of people for sure, causing them to beat a hasty retreat before lunch. Sigh, there go all my la-di-dah notions of being one of 'em yummy mummies.

And in other nastier news I espied a rat in my home yesterday. A rat. A RAT. In MY home. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhh!! Now don't get me wrong, I'm usually pretty good at dealing with this stuff. Like cockroaches. Pish tosh! Long live the pest control guys! Or lizards. P is a great lizard evictor, he shoos them out quite regularly outta the apartment and into the elevator to go forth and explore fresher territories. Or mosquitoes even, I was on back slapping terms with them in our old apartment in Bombay (hail All Out!). But rats? This is the first time in six years of playing house, that I've had to contend with this menace. I spent the first half of the day raising hell for my help and turning the house inside out. I mean I have OCD when it comes to keeping the house clean, so there had to be something wrong here. My maid, who still hasn't figured out how to put Nikki to sleep and is therefore not among my favorite people at the moment, redeemed herself greatly by picking up a broom and venturing forth bravely in search of the rodent. Eventually we figured out that the rat is probably a resident of the drying area in the flat directly above ours and was probably just dropping by to check out new locations. Even so, there was always the possibility that it could make this aimless wandering around a habit. Then what? Naturally, I've resolved to deal with this sticky situation with my characteristic calm and fortitude.
I'm thinking, a couple of months at my mum's while P figures out how to make these parts rodent free?

2 comments:

AD said...

Awesome post. Even we had a scare when Jiya fell off the bed once and we realized that the best solution was teaching her to climb down on her own and sure enough she got the hang of it, sooner than we'd imagined!

Diary Of A Stardusted Dreamer said...

Good idea, think I need to start some climbing lessons for Nikki myself. I don't think I'll survive another scare like the one I had when she fell off! Thanks for the tip!